Turning Jewels Into Water – the duo of Haitian-born drummer, DJ, educator and electronic music artist Val Jeanty and Indian-born drummer, producer and educator Ravish Momin –announce their new album, Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars, out August 21st on FPE Records, and share the lead single/video. It follows their 2019 album Map of Absences. For Our Reflection… Momin and Jeanty take their dynamic musical partnership to even greater heights and more intense depths. Imbued with the spirit of collaboration and influenced by cutting-edge sounds like South African Gqom, Our Reflection… reaches across oceans and continents, connecting the ancient with the modern.
As a collaborative project, Turning Jewels Into Water began when Jeanty participated in a jam session at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn while Momin was artist-in-residence there in September 2017. Their collaboration, rooted in improvisation, evokes the esoteric realms of the creative subconscious. Drawing from the Vodun religion, Val recreates the ancient rhythms and pulse of Haiti through digital beats, while Momin, whose own musical background is rooted in Indian, North African and Middle-Eastern traditions, has developed an original blend of electro-acoustic beats, drawing together the improvisational traditions in Jazz and Indian folk music. Together, they employ cutting-edge music-technological tools such as acoustic drums outfitted with Sensory Percussion triggers, Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) drum pads and Smart Fabric MIDI Controllers, but still emphasize the ritual aspects of creating music in the digital realm.
Speaking to the collaborative approach they took to making Our Reflection…, Momin explains that he and Jeanty lead an ensemble of musicians from around the world, with the end product being a challenge to the ethnic fetishizing that far-too commonly comes along with global/world music. In March 2020, Momin had already reached out to other artists for remote contributions, including Iranian singer/daf player Kamyar Arsani (based in Washington, DC) and friend Mpho Molikeng, a master musician of South African indigenous instruments (based in Lesotho). Jeanty had already set up a base in Boston (for her newly appointed position as a professor at Berklee College of Music) and was also planning on collaborating remotely.
Therefore, once mandatory quarantines went into effect across the US and the world in mid-March, it had little impact on our creative process. The resulting album has elements that are at once familiar and unfamiliar, as we evoke a digital folk music from nowhere. ~ Momin
Accompanying the lead single is a video created by Art Jones.
The video for ‘Our Reflection Adorned by Newly Formed Stars’ explores the narrative of the Siddis – Indians of East African origin, who were merchants, sailors and even rulers of Indian territories, but have now been marginalized and have had their histories erased. As the #BLM movement rightfully gains prominence across the globe, we wanted to raise awareness of the anti-blackness that is deeply embedded in other cultures as well. ~ Momin
With Our Reflection Adorned By Newly Formed Stars, Turning Jewels Into Water uses forward-thinking electronic music and experimentation to tap into a continuum of folk music that is as old as time itself. Also, containing remixes from Laughing Ears, and EMB , the music here is Indian, African, Afro-Caribbean and global all at once. By combining their unique cultural experiences Jeanty and Momin are bold enough to allow all of the tensions and commonalities to play freely and resolve themselves in the music.